Label:
Deutsche Grammophon – 2538 216
Format:
Vinyl, LP / Country: UK / Released: 1971
This
LP, released in Germany, was also available as part of the six LP box set
'Avantgarde Vol.4' on Deutsche Grammophon, catalog number – 2561 107.
Style:
Post-Modern, Avant-garde
Recorded
at Chappell Studios, London, on February 15/16, 1971. Composed in 1969.
Design
– Erich Lethgau
Engineer
– John Timperley
Musical
Assistance [Musical Advisor] – John White
Producer
– Karl Faust
Producer
[Assistant] – Richard V. Hill
Orchestra
– The Scratch Orchestra
Composed
By, Conductor, Liner Notes – Cornelius Cardew
Printed
in Germany by Gebrüder Jänecke, Hannover
Matrix
/ Runout (Side A runout, stamped): 1 ℗ 1971 UK 2538
216 / 2561 107 S1-A
Matrix
/ Runout (Side B runout, stamped): 1 ℗ 1971 UK 2538
216 / 2561 107 S2-B
Side
A
A
- Paragraph 2
...................................................................................................
21:45
Side
B
B
- Paragraph 7
...................................................................................................
20:30
Performers:
CORNELIUS
CARDEW – conductor
and
THE
SCRATCH ORCHESTRA
Though
David Jackman is not mentioned anywhere on the sleeve, he was an active member
of the Scratch Orchestra at this point and is probably one of the massed
singers. Some of the other members mentioned in the liner notes are: John
Tillbury, Gavin Bryars, Michael Parsons, Howard Skempton, Michael Chant,
Christopher Hobbs, and Hugh Shrapnel - each of who recruited friends, family
and students to swell the ranks.
Paragraph
2
Cornelius
Cardew composed experimental works for each of the seven paragraphs of The
Great Learning by Confucius (translated into English by Ezra Pound). Each piece
is for different instrumentation. Paragraph 2, for drums and voices: groups
were situated around outdoor arcade, each group consisting of one drummer and a
number of singers. The drummers play through twenty-six rhythms, in any order
each chooses, while the associated vocalists sing the text from Confucius on
notes that evolve slowly, timing their entrance to the downbeat of their
particular drummer. Each group is autonomous, and each performance unique.
Paragraph
7
Paragraph 7 is less
raucous than Paragraph 2, being for singers only. Each singer chooses a pitch
to begin, and sings the first line ("If"—see the score below) softly
eight times, each time for the length of a breath. Then she moves around the
space, listening to other singers, until hearing a new pitch of her choice, at
which time she sings the second line ("the root", five times) on that
pitch. Everyone progresses through the piece this way, as a cloud of pitches
gradually coalesces into several clusters. The audience moves throughout the
space, similarly to the singers, so the piece is a locomotive and auditory
kaleidoscope.Consider this statement of Morton Feldman in 1966: “Any direction modern music will take in England will come about only through Cardew, because of him, by way of him. If the new ideas in music are felt today as a movement in England, it’s because he acts as a moral force, a moral centre” (quoted by Michael Nyman in Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 115).
Born
in England in1931, Cardew became involved on the continental music scene during
the late the 1950's, years that marked the consolidation of the postwar
avant-garde’s achievement. Cardew worked with Stockhausen from 1956 to 1960,
serving as the composer’s assistant in the production of Carre, and was
associated with Cage for fully a decade (1958-68). As a performer, writer, and
organizer of concerts, Cardew actively promoted the music of these and other
adventurous composers, including Pierre Boulez, Christian Wolff, and Terry
Riley. Cardew thus established his credentials as an experimental music
professional during these years, yet that very professionalism eventually
struck him as problematic: Cardew viewed contemporary music increasingly as the
occupation of a highly trained elite, completely removed from the experience of
the general public. Dissatisfied with this situation for both musical and
political reasons (Cardew had become active in leftist politics at this time),
Cardew became interested in music that could bridge the gap between amateurs
and professionals. Cardew’s compositional response to this challenge during the
years 1963-67 was Treatise: a graphic score of nearly 200 pages. Experimental
composers such as Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown had been
using graphic scores for years, but Cardew’s was different: he provided no
instructions for interpretation of the images. The performer is presented with
page after page of complex combinations of circles, lines, squares, triangles,
and their derivatives, yet no instrumentation is specified, nor is the relationship
of the images to pitch or rhythm in any way explained. The performers of
Treatise must study the images and realize them through improvisation or in
fully-notated compositions. Writing some years later in his Treatise Handbook,
Cardew stated his intention [“Each player interprets the score according to his
own acumen and sensibility. He may be guided by many things—by the internal
structure of the score itself, by his personal experience of music-making, by
reference to the various traditions growing up around this or other
indeterminate works, by the action of the other musicians working on the piece,
and—failing these—by conversation with the composer during rehearsal. (Treatise
Handbook, Edition Peters, 1971, xii)]. Treatise is perhaps best regarded less
as a composition than as a stimulus to composition.
In its breadth, complexity, and rigor, Treatise
was an enormous achievement, yet it did not lead to a subsequent series of
graphic works. Instead, Cardew sought to create music that not only was accessible
to amateurs, but that could be performed by large groups of people. Part of the
solution, Cardew believed, was to establish a community of performers, a
community that embraced individuals of varied talents and backgrounds who would
approach music-making in a collective manner. This was the impetus behind The
Scratch Orchestra, the focus of Cardew’s activities in London during the years
1969-72. As described in “A Scratch Orchestra: draft constitution” (Cardew,
Scratch Music, 10-11) the ensemble of professional and nonprofessional
musicians engaged in improvisation rites, “scratch music” (structured
improvisation), popular classics (traditional works, freely adapted from memory
by the performers at hand), composition, and research projects. Since most of
this music was improvised to some extent and was not recorded, it has faded
from memory. The notable exception is The Great Learning, Cardew’s monumental
setting of a text by Confucius. If Treatise stands as Cardew’s major
composition of the 1963-66, The Great Learning is his masterwork of the Scratch
Orchestra period.
(Stephen
Miles: Notes on Cornelius Cardew)
If you find it, buy this album!
If you find it, buy this album!